


Parasites

by deathwailart



Category: Original Work
Genre: Abortion, Body Horror, F/M, Menstruation, Pregnancy, Reproductive Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-20
Updated: 2011-08-20
Packaged: 2017-10-22 21:23:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/242736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>So this...I don’t even know what it is but it results from watching certain episodes of Battlestar Galactica and half-remembered snippets from a fantasy book along with reading an article I found via lj memory hopping about something along these lines. It’s graphic and disturbing and there’s a lot of talk about reproduction and vaginas and everything that goes along with that. Really, it’s about reproductive issues and even though I don’t have them, this idea wouldn’t go away. I guess part of it is maybe about gender identity (or reproductive identity, does that exist?) and expectations and just...being wholly freaked out by a certain aspect of your body.</p>
<p>Sex education in the UK tends to start when you’re in primary six at roughly ten years of age and even though the story has no real setting, I’m drawing from what I remember of sex ed lessons back then. Most of it was a whole class thing with the whole basic puberty talk about body hair, sweat, spots, hormones, organs involved and of course, pregnancy and childbirth before the boys were separated and the girls were given separate talks on periods. This also happened again in secondary school which was an excruciating thing for the year group with the talk from the school nurse about periods and all the things involved and pregnancy and just...was generally toe-curlingly awful.</p>
<p>Warnings: for anyone who is easily offended by material like this and who might feel sick as a result. The rating is so high because this is not for younger people or the faint of heart. Discussion of puberty, periods, pregnancy, reproduction and the parts of the female anatomy involved. Comparisons made between a foetus and a parasite. The character in question suffers from Tokophobia (fear of childbirth) but that is not actually stated in the course of the story itself.</p></blockquote>





	Parasites

She has nightmares.  Nothing out of the ordinary in and of themselves but it’s the things her nightmares are about that make them stand out.  Her nightmares are vivid, horrifically real and either in glorious technicolour or black and white and grey with bright slashes of red.  She wakes drenched in sweat, heart hammering and suffering agonising phantom cramps.  She’s had these nightmares for years, since she was little and asked about babies after her teacher went on maternity leave looking fit to burst.  Back then the dreams were vague and almost shapeless, random women with big bellies entering hospitals that smelt of lemon scented bleach until suddenly a copper tang filled the air and screams, oh god, the screams, then the things that appeared from rooms, things that chased her, horrible things with claws and fangs and not human in the slightest things. 

Her mother, if she managed to pry the details out of her, said they would go away soon and that she would understand when she was older.  She banned her from watching sci-fi and monster films for good measure.  But the dreams didn’t go away.  She just learned to keep quiet and calm down after them.

Then she got older and there was hair, hair in places where it hadn’t been before.  The fine dusting on her legs darkened; there was hair under her arms and between her legs.  She developed breasts and her hips changed and the boys that she used to pal around with are noticing.  Boys and girls are different now, more different than they ever were and they don’t want to play together anymore.  Her friends (the girls) all complained about it with her when they were shunned time and time again and when the boys just wanted to play “show me yours I’ll show you mine.”  And when they started to wear training bras in place of vests or nothing at all under their t-shirts, the boys pinged the straps and ran off cackling and crowing about this new triumph.  They looked through books in the library, books about the body with illustrations of a man and a woman and all the bits and pieces on the inside and they were horrible, alien and they said that babies came from there and then there was talk of bleeding and she begged them to shut the book because blood was meant to stay on the inside, not come out and not come out of there.    One day though, in class, she felt too hot and sick, stomach cramping and she remembered the book and the words puberty and period and menstruation and how it all meant she was becoming a woman and that one day she would have babies but still, when she saw the blood staining her underwear when she went to the toilet she almost cried.  The teacher sent her home (she lied, said she threw up and she almost did and she was clammy and pale and trembling) and it took the whole journey home with her mother for her to open up and saying she was bleeding down there.

Her mother seemed excited, almost morbidly.  She said her little girl was growing up and that she was blossoming and all she could think – when sharp knife edges of pain weren’t making her curl in on herself and whimper – was that her body was doing strange things, it was preparing itself, biding its time for an alien to grow in there and crawl free.  She didn’t tell her mother that.  She didn’t want anyone to think she was crazy.

\---

Some of her friends are envious that she’s bleeding because it means she’s normal.  She’s had three periods (they’re not regular because she’s young, she doesn’t know if this is good or bad because she dreads them, wants to throw up at the thought but then again, knowing when exactly they’ll come doesn’t comfort her either) and other girls are starting to get them and the boys are suddenly going red for no reason and hunching over (boys don’t get the same things as girls but none of the girls know what happens to the boys yet) when they’re told that sex education is starting.  They giggle because sex is a grown up word, a word they’re not meant to know yet.  They’re told to be mature, to behave and so they do, sitting in rows, hands clasped while the teacher drones on about penises and vaginas and changes and asking if anyone has questions.  There are diagrams again, explained in great detail and it makes her toes curl in her stiff black school shoes and she can feel the sweat beading her forehead. 

Then the television is wheeled out and credits appear, looking for all the world like an info-mercial but info-mercials are about cleaning products, not the miracle of childbirth.

It’s repulsive.

One or two people faint.  Boys and girls.  They’re covering their eyes and she’s staring at her desk but she looks up every now and then and that poor women, she’s in pain, she’s screaming and no one is helping her and there’s so much blood and how does anything that big fit there? 

She faints before she sees the end and the video is the subject of much gossip for over a week.  She sits alone and reads books and doesn’t think about it.

\--- 

She’s fourteen when the nightmares start to feature her.  Her body is swollen like a balloon and she can barely walk and the thing is squirming and thrashing and it wants out.  She is terrified her chest will burst open (she watched the Alien films with her mother who seems to have forgotten about the childhood ban) and that she’s going to die but she toddles into the hospital and they strap her to a gurney and they loom over her, masks and latex gloves and bright white coats and a light that blinds her while she grunts and cries and the pain is more than she can bear and it feels like the thing in her belly is clawing its way out alone and it has fangs and claws and looks at her with murderous intent.

She wakes with a start and checks the date and a quick glance down at her nightie explains the cramps that settled themselves into her nightmare.  She’s regular now and it’s actually better because she can steel herself for it and know what to do to make herself feel better.  She cycles a lot; books say that exercise makes the pain go away and she goes out for as long as she can, pedalling furiously and she comes home sweaty and exhausted, legs trembling, shoulders stiff but that’s a good pain, a better pain.  She can deal with that.  Her parents don’t say much about it beyond making sure she has reflective clothes if it might get dark and the usual things like her showing them her route, making sure her lights and breaks work, packing her water and snacks and practically stapling her phone to her just in case.  She does her homework before she goes out so that she has no worries on the ride, just the wind on her face, faces and scenery flying by and the burn in her muscles.  She comes home exhausted, almost falls asleep in her dinner and then again in the shower.

On those nights, she’s too tired to conjure up terrifying fantastical images.

\---

Biology right now is about parasites and she actually likes the class.  She loves nature and it’s not like chemistry with its rules and exceptions with the rules having more exceptions than examples that actually prove the damn things and vice versa.  It’s not like physics either which is too much like maths and she really hates maths.  It’s dry and it’s dull and she can’t express anything in it.  Apparently, this is a girl thing but she doesn’t really care.  She’s good at it and she’s good at biology and biology is never boring.  So they’re studying parasites and she’s sitting and writing when one of the other people in the class, one of the boys, sticks up his hand.

“Yes?”  
  
“Aren’t babies sort of like parasites?”

And the class derails for the rest of the lesson and even though the biology teacher is trying to explain the differences, all she sees are the similarities.  How it’s dependent (at least for part of its life) on the host for survival.  How it takes nutrients from the host.  How it reduces host fitness. 

She hates her body sometimes.  Or the insides.  The stupid thing that is preparing her to house a damn parasite for endless months while she stretches and mutates and becomes irrational and her breasts turn into udders (yes, she knows that they’re mammary glands and that they have an actual function, despite what the boys seem to think) but it makes her feel as though her purpose is breeding.  As though she’s livestock. 

\--- 

Sixteen is when they’re deemed to be legal to go off and have sex, something adults are either strongly against, cautiously for or drowning in denial over.  Sixteen, she feels, is such an arbitrary age; not everyone is mature enough to have sex then, not everyone is sensible enough to take the precautions that have been spelled out to them time and time again because people, despite prudishness and moral attitudes, seem to be curiously fascinated with sex even though they’d never admit it.  She has a boyfriend and they do it and it’s pretty crap the first time and even though she doesn’t have a hymen it still hurts because she tenses up (she’s nervous because this is all so strange, so foreign and she’s spread bare for another person and she hasn’t been naked in front of a single soul since childhood) and her legs are too far apart and probably, she should be wet and the condom is definitely strange but it ends quickly.

They do it again though and shyly, her and the boy who has those clever fingers figure it out and it’s good, better than good and he’s a fast learner and even though awesome isn’t part of her regular vocabulary, it’s the word that fits best.

A friend though gets pregnant.  She summons the others in their group to the school toilets and there’s a lot of discussion over what exactly to do with the pregnancy tests she procured and there’s nothing so embarrassing as them all standing around, one guarding the door while they wait for their friend to pee and then crowd around something that she’s peed on, timing it and waiting for lines or words or colour changes (this one does all three).  During that time there’s discussion about being sick and no period and pulling out in time and thinking she would be okay and how her breasts are more tender than usual before the results are spotted and the girl bursts into tears right as the bell rings to tell them to go back to class.

It’s lunch before they all meet again but they’ve been texting back and forth and whispering to one another and the discussion in the girl’s toilets at lunch is about what to do and who to tell.  She feels nauseous listening to the discussion and she tries not to imagine seeing her friend change before her eyes and her mind plays an endless loop of childhood nightmares and the childbirth video and the discussion of parasites.

\---

Her nightmares feature her friends and her, all in hospital beds.  Her friend is keeping her baby and that’s what feeds this dream, the fact that she seems happy about this and about how her body is being hijacked.  In the dream her friend holds up a ball of teeth and nails and tentacles and wings and coos at it.

It rips her throat out as she cradles it to her breast.

\---

She is privy to intense discussions over the months leading up to the birth, shown bluish gray and black images of blobs that look nothing like babies.  She sees magazines and has pamphlets thrust in her face.  She cringes and her friends laugh and tease and the pregnant one shows off her stretch marks and they’re repulsive and when she runs her hands over her belly, she wants to vomit.  Her friends look at her as though she’s the alien one.

At the birth, she is wheedled into going by her friends (peer pressure is a terrible thing and it will still win) and her parents (they tell her to be a supportive friend).  The discussion is ghastly.  Talk of contractions and pushing and straining and the pain and how she tore and has stitches but it was worth it, wasn’t it and she cradles the end result.  It’s obviously a baby and it’s actually cute but the thought of going through an ordeal for that...it’s beyond insane.

\---

Her boyfriend says, “I would be so shit scared of having a baby.  Especially at our age.”  
  
She says, “Me too.”

\---

She finishes school, has another boyfriend or two and attends university.  She’s studying English and history and she likes both subjects and the discussions and she gets to write and research and the libraries are beautiful glorious things and she could live here, just inhaling it all, absorbing it into every pore.  She hasn’t had as many nightmares and she’s either growing up or immune or she just doesn’t think about it anymore; her dreams are now the result of falling asleep with studying on the brain and she runs through ancient hallways or arrives at her lecture hall naked and she has the odd nightmare that jerks her awake but it’s about a test or an assignment or a deadline.

She meets boys and there’s snogging and groping and looking at with longing across the room and of course the silly drunken fumbles at or after a long night at the union.  There’s an older guy, grad student, silly little soul patch beard thing under his lip with an all-knowing smirk and he’s meant to be helping her with her project but half the time they’re busy at his flat (which is a big deal, she’s living in the halls with no personal space and no quiet) with wine and take out and having sex in various places.

She puts an end to it when she passes her project because it feels right and stupidly, it makes her feel grown up and worldly.

\---

Six weeks later, flat on her back in a medical establishment with a doctor poking around and after discussing options to death, she feels like a frightened little girl.

\---

She swears it’s the closest she’ll let herself get.

\---

Time passes, she grows up and gets a job that okay, isn’t her first choice but teaching is an interesting challenge and it pays well and look at the holidays it gets her.  Marking isn’t so bad and most nights she has time to cycle for an hour or so after work and before dinner.  She writes when she has time and some of her things have been published in various magazines and she’s got a novel – every good English student has at least one – and she’s settled.  Happy.  She’s living with someone too, her boyfriend from her last year of university and they click, they work and they pretend they’re all grown up even if they spend the weekend playing computer games and drinking too much or just lying in bed having sex and eating cereal for dinner because they’re too lazy to bother cooking and ordering take out would require them to put on clothes.

She thinks she loves him.  And it hurts.  Because the thing in her dreams had his face when it crawled out of her.  She doesn’t tell him but she makes up a myriad of excuses for a while and it hurts even more when he smiles and nods and cuddles her close. 

She thinks he deserves more than someone who thinks he’s about to plant alien spawn in her that’s going to pop out looking like the bastard offspring of alien and predator.

\---

They’re getting married and they’re talking about pets and where they’d like to move to and do they want a church or a registry office when she skips her period.  She’s been stressed out because of the wedding so her periods aren’t exactly reliable and she’s thinking that right now is not the time for this and she’s waiting, waiting, waiting for the cramps, for the blood and she can barely sleep from the nightmares where the monstrosities have his face and he’s beaming and the doctors are smiling and saying success and that she should have more. 

In the shower she crouches down, knees pressed tight to her belly.  She doesn’t want to look at what might be there.

**Author's Note:**

> So this...I don’t even know what it is but it results from watching certain episodes of Battlestar Galactica and half-remembered snippets from a fantasy book along with reading an article I found via lj memory hopping about something along these lines. It’s graphic and disturbing and there’s a lot of talk about reproduction and vaginas and everything that goes along with that. Really, it’s about reproductive issues and even though I don’t have them, this idea wouldn’t go away. I guess part of it is maybe about gender identity (or reproductive identity, does that exist?) and expectations and just...being wholly freaked out by a certain aspect of your body.
> 
> Sex education in the UK tends to start when you’re in primary six at roughly ten years of age and even though the story has no real setting, I’m drawing from what I remember of sex ed lessons back then. Most of it was a whole class thing with the whole basic puberty talk about body hair, sweat, spots, hormones, organs involved and of course, pregnancy and childbirth before the boys were separated and the girls were given separate talks on periods. This also happened again in secondary school which was an excruciating thing for the year group with the talk from the school nurse about periods and all the things involved and pregnancy and just...was generally toe-curlingly awful.
> 
> Warnings: for anyone who is easily offended by material like this and who might feel sick as a result. The rating is so high because this is not for younger people or the faint of heart. Discussion of puberty, periods, pregnancy, reproduction and the parts of the female anatomy involved. Comparisons made between a foetus and a parasite. The character in question suffers from Tokophobia (fear of childbirth) but that is not actually stated in the course of the story itself.


End file.
